Much like Edinburgh, Winnipeg hosts a Fringe Festival every year to celebrate and disseminate less-traditional theatre and performance acts. Amy and I made it a point to get out to some of the shows, and at the same time discovered delicious $1 bite-sized “cakettes” from Cake-ology, the city’s premier cake bakery. We took a little bit of a risk by going on the opening night, as nothing had been reviewed yet and some shows inevitably turn out to be terrible. However, Dale Beaner and the Turtle Boy (a part-improv comedy about dysfunctional father-son relationships) turned out to be excellent.

Left: A brass band performs Push It on a street corner.

On our second trip, having consulted various reviews, we took in Sparks – a romantic comedy that turned out to be entertaining but not completely enjoyable due to the lead character being a gigantic jerk. And speaking of gigantic jerks, we caught part of a Rob Firenix performance while walking back to the centre of activities. While his show had some interesting elements (the fire whip being the most notable), it wasn’t particularly original and consisted of 5-10 minutes of talking for each minute of actually doing something. He also had the gall to demand the full 60-minute show price ($10) after incessantly mocking and belittling the audience, perhaps forgetting that he was performing on the free stage.

Left: Rob Firenix pretends to burn himself for $$$.

On the last day of the Fringe, we went to pay a visit to the much-anticipated Secondhandpants‘s Science Folktion Musical Adventure. The musicians generally play in a phone booth-sized jukebox which kids can put coins into to hear a live song, but the stage show includes sci-fi story elements (such as time travel and cryptozoology) and extra characters (such as Prof. Malomar Garfield and Rocket John). I spent a good portion of one of the scenes trying to identify the components of the Sellout 2000 machine, and absolutely loved the retro feel of the story and props.

Left: The Secondhandpants. Below, left to right: The Sellout 2000 in action, Space Robot performs; Lif-Tor and the Time Travel Guitar, Rocket John takes the Secondhandpants to the future; The Man From Space meets the Birdman, the Secondhandpants meet Sass Quatch; The Secondhandpants, Rob Firenix, Sass Quatch.